Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 23 May 2011 20:06:17 +0200 | From | Micha Nelissen <> | Subject | Re: USB stick as root device does not work |
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Hi all,
Alan Stern wrote: > On Mon, 23 May 2011, Randy Dunlap wrote: > Better to ask people familiar with the block layer (CC'ed).
I found out what happened: I use LILO, and lilo was not passing root=/dev/sdb1 on the commandline, but root=811. However, I didn't see that since on i386 that part had already scrolled off-screen. I found out by accident, due to a user space program trying to parse that, expecting a string, getting a number :-).
Using the following in my lilo.conf:
append="root=/dev/sdb1 rootwait" instead of root=/dev/sdb1
works perfectly. Maybe this information is useful for somebody else; I did not find it using a quick google.
Thanks for your attention.
Micha
>> On Sun, 22 May 2011 16:13:17 +0200 Micha Nelissen wrote: >> >>> Hi, >>> >>> Using USB stick as root device does not work for me. I specify >>> 'root=/dev/sdb1 rootwait' on the kernel commandline, but the kernel does >>> not wait for the USB stick to be scanned and its partitions found. I >>> have a harddisk which is /dev/sda, and this USB stick would be /dev/sdb. >>> >>> I think blk_lookup_devt returns the block device number even if it does >>> not exist yet, and init/do_mounts.c:473 therefore skips waiting: >>> >>> if ((ROOT_DEV == 0) && root_wait) { >>> >>> due to ROOT_DEV having become non-zero already. >>> >>> If I use the commandline: 'root=/dev/sdb1 rootdelay=5' then it does >>> mount and boot properly. However, using rootwait seems safer and faster >>> to me, that it's meant for this use case. >>> >>> Thanks for any pointers, >>> >>> Micha >>> -- >> --- >> ~Randy >> *** Remember to use Documentation/SubmitChecklist when testing your code *** > >
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